"Many happy returns of the day," said Piglet...

One month ago I drafted a post introducing the Bookshop at Lanier’s Books and I pushed ‘Publish’ with a pounding heart.

Four weeks later, we hit the 100-mark with books sold and marked the first small anniversary of a dream-come-true.

“I can’t believe I’ve done this one hundred times,” I told Philip as he watched me wrapping the illustrious volume.

I can’t believe that I get to do this. I can’t believe that I get to play emissary between these treasures and the readers that love them. I can’t believe the kindred connections that have been made in a month. The glowing kindnesses of comments and emails. The breathtaking gift that surprised me by ‘return post’ one day last week.

I am truly overwhelmed. And so very grateful–to God and to the kind folks that take the time to stop in here–that I wanted to do something to acknowledge it. I wanted to have a little party. And to give away a one-month birthday present.

The title I selected is a very special one: Elizabeth Goudge’s A Diary of Prayer. It’s a book that has meant a lot to me personally, and a lovely and inspiring look at the prayers that influenced our own dear Elizabeth.

So here’s what you have to do: leave a comment below recommending a favorite book (these will be gifts in themselves!) and perhaps a little memento of what it’s meant in your life. The comment form will be open until midnight EST on Saturday the 4th of September.  A winner will be selected by the very unscientific but historically reliable method of name-drawing out of a hat (I promise to make it a chic, vintage affair) and will be announced on Sunday the 5th.

And thank you, again, dear readers and friends, for making this little site a place that you pause on the web. I hope and pray that it’s a ‘pause that refreshes’.

So Owl wrote…and this is what he wrote:
HIPY PAPY BTHETHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY
Pooh looked on admiringly.
“I’m just saying ‘A Happy Birthday’,” said Owl carelessly.
“It’s a nice long one,” said Pooh, very much impressed by it.

from Eeyore Has a Birthday and Gets Two Presents, A. A. Milne

©2010 Lanier's Books. All Rights Reserved.

Tasha Tudor ~ August 28, 1915--June 18, 2008

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

The Henry David gem had been buzzing at my mind all day, and all day I had been tenaciously smiling it down.

I had smiled it down when I cut out one of the skirt pieces upside down, and when I had to trot back to the store to buy the lining fabric I had somehow managed to forget, and—gritting my teeth a bit—when I found I had to rip a whole long careful row of neat stitches that just happened to be on the wrong side of the fabric.

“I need to do this for myself,” I insisted to the air as I took a deep breath and hunched over the billows of pale blue eyelet on my lap.

For weeks I had been so busy I’d scarcely had time to breathe. I had a barnful of newly acquired baby goats and lambs and a whole litany of new responsibilities to go with them. A household regimen threatening to implode under the pressure of forestalled spring cleaning. A garden that had gone in by the sheer grit of an exhaustion wrung out into one last burst of fatigued productivity. Not to mention a world of needs and their care that clamored outside the boundary markers of my own particular ‘vineyard’. And we were leaving on vacation the next morning, leaving all those babies and seedlings and dust bunnies to the oversight of others and packing-ironing-unpacking-repacking-cleaning-out-the-fridge-changing-the-sheets-watering-the-garden-remembering-to-feed-the-fish-and-don’t-forget-the-chicken-feed to get on the road first thing the next day.

So, of course, it followed, that the very best thing I could possibly do for myself was to make a new dress.

After the incident with the seam ripper I stood up for a stretch, thinking a cup of tea would clear my head a bit. And maybe still the pounding in my temples. On the way downstairs I stopped by my desk and checked my email.

A moment later I was in my chair with my head in my hands, weeping.

Tasha Tudor had died.

Peacefully, in her own home, the message said. With her loved ones around her and all the evidences crowding in of a life lived well. Well? Thriving, glowing, fine and high and noble! The life she had imagined and gone after with a passion rarely seen, in our age or any other. The life that had become a world, for her family and friends, and for those of us all over the globe privileged to have a share in it through her books and paintings.

The news drew me up, halted me in my mad career through the day. Sickened me with the sham I had been making of my own ‘life imagined’ of late. All she had imparted by her life and her works seemed to wash over me in a flood and mingle with my tears. Those little Nubian goats out in the barn were her doing—I had fallen in love amid the pages of her books. The dream of a kitchen hearthfire and fairy rings in the garden and magical Christmases and ‘farm-fresh eggs’ (from the most coddled chickens, of course)–a homeplace where the old ways were revered (though of an 1850’s variety, instead of an 1830’s)—these all came down to me through the goodly lineage of Tasha Tudor.

Or they rose up in me, rather, latent longings that were as much me as the blue eyes I’d gotten from my grandfather and my slightly crooked smile. Tasha Tudor helped me to validate them, and a thousand others. To look the world and its expectations in the eye and say, “Well, hang it, this is the way I want to live my life!” This careful attendance upon beauty—this devotion to the moments that make for real living—for myself and those I love. Alone in the garden; sipping tea with a kindred spirit at my kitchen table or feasting with friends in the dining room; nuzzling a thoroughly spoiled goat in the barn; welcoming my husband back to a haven at the end of the day. I embraced the choices offered me as a young woman in the era into which I had been born. And I chose this.

And Tasha had given me the courage to do it.

Autumn clematis ~ Tasha called it virgin's bower

But I’d gotten sidetracked over the unthinking course of a busy year; lost some of my moorings. I had forgotten how unnecessary some things were, and how essentially vital were others. I’d given my perfectionism its head and I’d jostled along brain-rattled in its wake. When choices had pressed in hard all around me, I hadn’t kept faith with the original vision. The vision was rooted in deeper things, of course, than a fellow human creature’s chosen lifestyle: it was anchored in the eternal and completely unique calling of God on my life. It had to do not only with the temporal elements of making a home, but with the undying realities sustaining it.

I had forgotten.

The life Tasha Tudor lived so graciously was her choice. Likewise, no matter what I had been saying to myself to the contrary, the pace I’d been keeping over all those weary months was my choice. It had been my choice to respond to every need that came to my ears as if I alone in the universe could answer it. It had been my choice to prefer one opportunity over another simply because it seemed more ‘spiritual’ and important, personal desires notwithstanding. It had been my choice to try and do it all when I realized that personal desires were getting the shaft.

Every day I have the opportunity to choose how I am going to live—this is a great privilege but also a great responsibility. The way of our dreams–the Alpine Path, if you will–is not a leisurely stroll in a shaded wood, or even a pleasant hike up a rolling grade. It is a daily battle. A limiting unto more freedom. A devotion and a discipline, and it will sometimes require a shedding or a pruning or a sundering. It means that I cannot be choice-less in the matter because every day’s fruit is only a result of the choices I have made all along the way, from the time I get up till the time I go to bed.

Into this equilibrium for many Christians is added the uniquely evangelical bugbear of separating the ‘sacred’ from the ‘secular’. The judging between options and activities based on so-called ‘spiritual merit’.

The low priority of certain desires on the mere basis that they are mine and must therefore somehow be less than God’s will. The notion that tiredness is next to godliness. The goading to keep pace with the frenzied music of the world around me rather than the still, soft music that God would sing over my life. Viewing life as a compartmentalized series of duties and earned pleasures instead of the holistic dance of sacramental joy that it is.

The voices hammer loud in my head:

“What? Devotion to a lifestyle? There is nothing eternal in that outlook—it is all wrapped up in temporal things that won’t endure. And besides, you need to be out witnessing rather than letting your self-image get tied up in that house and whatever it is that you do there.”

But then I brush fingers with the great ones and my heart breathes out the pure air of eternity:

“Don’t be too easily convinced that God really wants you to do all sorts of work you needn’t do. Each must do his duty ‘in that state of life to which God has called him.’ Remember that a belief in the virtues of doing for doing’s sake is characteristically feminine, characteristically American, and characteristically modern: so that three veils may divide you from the correct view! There can be intemperance in work just as in drink. What feels like zeal may be only fidgets or even the flattering of one’s self-importance. As MacDonald says, ‘In holy things may be unholy greed!’ And by doing what ‘one’s station and its duties’ does not demand, one can make oneself less fit for the duties it does demand and so commit some injustice. Just you give Mary a chance as well as Martha!”

C.S. Lewis, Letters to An American Lady

“You can’t witness to a computer screen,” said one friend in exasperation at this supposed dichotomy.

Josephine amid the forget-me-nots

But because of Tasha Tudor and her example to live the life uniquely suited to one’s calling, I can hold my head up a little higher and say, “No, you can’t do much witnessing to a computer. Or a row of tomato plants or a loaf of bread. Or to a barnful of animals, but it’s highly unlikely they would need it. I prefer to let them witness to me.”

And it’s at that computer screen and in that garden and kneeling amid velvety, inquisitive noses that I find God. It’s in the quiet mornings of a quiet life. It’s in poetry and music and fabulous talks with my husband on the front porch over a glass of wine. And with my friends over a pot (or three) of tea. In novels and in the classics of my faith and in old cookbooks. This is me. This is my life—the life I have been called and equipped to live. No one else will have the same destiny with God that I would amid flowers and goats and cats and dogs and stories and duets—this one is tailor-made for me. And for some reason, this is where He most pleases to meet me and show me Himself. This is where Christ dwells in me and where eternity touches time. And that’s what it’s all about.

I grew to hate that silly dress I had been stewing over when I got the news of Tasha’s death. It’s an absolute dream, a frothy cloud after a 1950′s cut. But just like the tare that inspired it, it’s too much. Too fussy; too burdened with its own presence. It represents a false me, a me that frets over stubborn projects just because I happened to think them up. A me that says I can do it all and still have grey matter to spare. And save the world while I’m at it.

A me that is not me. Not really. And it’s such a relief to be reminded.

So today I’m celebrating Tasha Tudor’s life and all the determined joy with which she lived it. I’m keeping her memory in the keeping of my dreams—many of which have been kindled into life by her own. My grateful and heartfelt love follows her, and my teacup is raised with another bit of  Thoreau that Tasha’s friends will instantly recognize:

I learned this, at least, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

edited to add: In honor of Tasha’s birthday today, I am offering a lovely first edition copy of ‘Tasha Tudor’s Bedtime Book’ at a special price. Visit the Bookshop and sort by ‘Date Added’ to see it!

©2010 Lanier's Books. All Rights Reserved.

Lady Lilith ~Dante Gabriel Rossetti

George Macdonald was the grandfather of us all. ~Madeleine L’Engle

Ten pages into George MacDonald’s Lilith I was thoroughly entranced—there’s nothing like a memory-haunted library and a mysterious visitant and secret doors to get this girl to sit up and take notice.

Twenty pages in I was right royally flummoxed. I found myself floundering and sputtering about as gracelessly as the book’s protagonist, Mr. Vane—and asking almost as many questions.

“How am I to begin where everything is so strange?” he poses to his new-found and utterly unreadable guide, Mr. Raven.

I wanted to know the same thing. Alluring as this new world was that he—and I—had been ushered into, I couldn’t quite find my footing.

But after another forty or so pages of exquisite bewilderment a light began to spread, like one of the incarnate moonrises in the book itself: I was supposed to be confused.

It was my journey as much as it was Vane’s and I had as much to be shocked and riveted by as he did. In short, I had as much to learn about living and dying and really living as the benighted hero stumbling about in a world that wavers behind the very thin scrim of this one.

For if Lilith is about anything, it’s about losing one’s life to find it indeed. There’s a hazy distinction that materializes slowly between the characters that are actually dead and the ones that have merely ceased to live. The latter are pitiable things, whether walking around in the prime of life or rattling naked in their bones. The former—those voluntary dreamers that Mr. Vane encounters early on in Mr. Raven’s ‘cemetery’—have merely found what life is all about.

“I am alive!” I objected, shuddering

“Not much,” rejoined the sexton with a smile, “—not nearly enough. Blessed be the true life that the pauses between its throbs are not death!”

Stoutly refusing his own invitation to exchange his image of life for the real thing, Mr. Vane embarks on a journey that is truly fantastical in every sense of the word. This culminating work from the very Grandfather of Fantasy is admittedly a wild ride, peopled with warring phantasms that knock each other to pieces and monsters so gloriously grotesque that I can’t help but think MacDonald secretly enjoyed describing them. But for every evil there is a beauty that dazzles and hurts with its flash of true and living fire. And as I watched Mr. Vane bumble along, tripping over his own efforts and misguided intentions, I couldn’t help but flinch at his stupidity. It just hit a little too close to home, all this workaday dullness to the unbearable realities of joy. With Lilith, I felt like Grandpa George picked me up by the scruff of the neck and gave me a brisk shake. And a kiss for good measure.

Weaving the Talmudic myth of Adam’s ‘first wife’, Lilith into a story about an ordinary person encountering the love of God is frankly something that only MacDonald would take on. I’m not even up to explaining how he did it. With his untrammeled imagination and wild faith in the goodness of the Giver of Life, he whisks us from the library of an ancient country house to the very feet of the Ancient of Days. And all with that impetuous joy that seems to wave back and hasten us along from the next hilltop he’s mounted, as much as to say, “Never mind all those loose ends and questions of yours—just wait till you see what’s ahead!”

“You have died into life, and will die no more; you have only to keep dead…”

©2010 Lanier's Books. All Rights Reserved.

"Launch out into the deep..." ~Luke 5: 4

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push us into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.

Sir Francis Drake, 1557, before departing from Portsmouth, England, to circumnavigate the globe.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. ~Mark Twain

©2010 Lanier's Books. All Rights Reserved.

"I'm almost afraid to handle such soft vellum and heavy cream-colored pages. Being used to the dead-white paper and stiff cardboardy covers of American books, I never knew a book could be such a joy to the touch." ~Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

Quite candidly, I didn’t get the big idea.

A slim volume with an address for a title. (Albeit a London, address, lending a smidge of credibility.) Nondescript, by an American lady I had never heard of.

And yet, Mrs. Downs couldn’t keep it in the store. She was constantly tracking down first editions for people and they were downright giddy to receive them.

I never cared much for books of letters, preferring the flowery prose of my Victorian novels and classics. And certainly not a book of letters published in the unappealing epoch of the 1970s.

It just wasn’t me. I smiled at the enthusiasm of Mrs. Downs and her customers. And I always thought of it tenderly in connection with her. But not tenderly enough to tempt me.

And then I read it.

"Frank Doel, what are you DOING over there, you are not doing ANYthing, you are just sitting AROUND...i swear i don't know how that shop keeps going." ~H.H.

Marooned at home one day with a fever and not quite up to the thundering word-craft of Wuthering Heights on my bedside table, I dipped into a paperback version of 84, Charing Cross Road that I had picked up along the way in memory of my beloved Mrs. Downs. Philip came home a few hours later to find me sobbing into my pillow over it. He took it from me and read it in one sitting, dashing the tears from his eyes when he was done.

I saw now, as an adult, what I had been unprepared to see as a girl. I understood why Mrs. Downs and her compatriots loved this little book with such an undying loyalty. It was her story, and that of countless booksellers and booklovers the world over. It was no wonder that upon its publication it became an instant best-seller, going on to be produced as a play and later a major motion picture starring Anne Bancroft and the inimitable Anthony Hopkins.

84 Charing Cross Road is the correspondence between a brassy American writer and a gentlemanly English bookseller. Spanning two decades, it begins in the post-war days of the 1940s when English books were not only difficult to find in the States, they were prohibitively expensive. Especially for a poor free-lance writer and script reader living in New York City. A chance encounter with an ad in The Saturday Review prompted the first letter, an endearingly-blunt request with a five dollar bill enclosed. The friendship that bloomed almost instantly between Miss Hanff in her brownstone and Mr. Frank Doel in his London shop expanded to include fellow employees and even Frank’s wife, Nora. If Helene’s effusive camaraderie is disarming to the Brits, their loveliness of manner and graciousness begets a family-like devotion in her own heart.

For twenty years the letters—and books—fly back and forth across The Pond. And in that time one of the most heart-warming accounts of human friendship and kindness unfolds. There is an almost spiritual quality to the giving and the receiving that transpires, the careful love of old books and the tending of relationships. Our modern world seems to have very little time for such things anymore.

"Just a note to let you know that your gift parcel arrived safely today and the contents have been shared out between the staff..." ~F.P.D.

We watched the movie again last night, for the umpteenth time. It’s an absolutely brilliant adaptation, and for all 100 minutes of it the tears poured down my face in constant succession. This story has had my heart for so long—it conjures Mrs. Downs and the days working in her shop; my own experience with English bookstores and the cherished volumes I’ve carted home over the years; the passion my husband and I share for a lovely binding and a gilt-edged page and a smooth leather cover.

But I was suddenly encountering it on a completely different level. I’ve always identified with Helene, unwrapping her English treasures in her dingy apartment and running her hands over them with a lingering reverence. But this time I was the Frank in the story. The Mrs. Downs. The procurer and provider of the treasures. I saw the joy flicker over his face as he came across a title he knew she would love and the somewhat abashed happiness with which he received her overtures of friendship. I even got choked up over the scene of a shop girl wrapping up Helene’s first shipment of books.

I have seen the same kind of sympathy spring up right here in my own little shop, the same joy of kindred kindness extended to me in your notes, the heartfelt revelations of the faces behind the orders, the emails telling me that the packages have arrived safely at their new homes. I have been overwhelmed and humbled by your response and your joy. Thank you, kind friends.

There’s nothing quite like the love of books for the beginning of a friendship, is there?

©2010 Lanier's Books. All Rights Reserved.

"We tell the Old, Old Story over and over again--but we introduce the moments of Now." ~Walt Wangerin

There is no such thing as art. There are only artists.

Ernst Gombrich, The Story of Art

I had that driven home this past weekend at The Rabbit Room’s first-ever gathering in the flesh, saw it living and breathing, laughing and even getting choked up at times. Felt its electricity tingling in my veins and an answering call piercing my heart. In company of some of the most passionate music makers and story tellers and painters and theologians I am ever likely to encounter, I tasted the good bread of Community and drank deep of the wells of Truth.

I was privileged to sit in on lectures that made me dizzy with excitement and stimulation, ranging from the works of George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis to Annie Dillard and Flannery O’Connor. I took copious amounts of illegible notes and I told secrets to friends of an hour. I laughed till I cried and I made a fool of myself more than once (always a good thing) and I felt the sweet sting of tears in my eyes as God plunged His words deep with that pain that heals and sings.

And I saw Gombrich’s maxim above excavated and built up by an even greater truth, a higher, nobler beauty:

“There are no such things as ‘artists’ and ‘non-artists’,” Russ Ramsey told us, sitting at the front of a small classroom with candlelight playing almost symbolically off his face. “There is only lit and unlit.”

My apologies to Russ that I cannot for the life of me remember if that was an original or a quote from Annie Dillard (and, you’ll recall, my notes are not going to help me out much). But regardless of their source, he spoke the words into the room and they entered into my soul. I fairly beamed with the joy of them and winced under the longing that welled in me like a vital spring.

Lit. Illumined; awake; aware. It’s what my heart desires, even faints for: this kindling touch of Light and Life that is outside of me entirely and yet, miraculously, inconceivably within me by the presence of Jesus Christ in my life. The age-old Incandescence that sets souls aflame with life and selfhood; the Light which is there whether I am or not, loving the world without stint, and without which I cannot live. I want to see it in its glory, be made brave by it for the nameless sufferings and unbearable beauties it reveals.

I want to be available, like a painter with brushes in hand or a midwife assisting at a birth, should it please God to strike His flame over my head. And He will: He does it every single day upon every single person on earth, for He has chosen to imprint His likeness, His image, on humankind. And when one of us happens to bow the head and accept the fire, to receive a signal flare of eternal realities in their little corner of the universe, the world calls them ‘artists’. God calls them image-bearers.

“When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? And when it is out, who needs it?”

(Now that one I know to be Annie, for there’s a tiny ‘A.D.’ scrawled next to it in my notebook.)

Not only did I receive such verities, I experienced them. I saw them in action, in life, in the artists around me. One of the shining moments of the weekend was getting to talk to Ron Block, halting and stammering as I was over how much I loved his music, over the fact that the first gift Philip ever gave to me was an Alison Krauss album. He grinned like we were old friends and my nerves scurried away, silly things. And when he spoke there was that same electricity I had been encountering all weekend; the same sense of ignition that draws one irresistibly to the Source of the warmth and the light. Here was someone admittedly (and deservedly) famous in the world’s accounting. And through his conversation, and later by the treat of his music, he left me with the indelible impression of his selfhood submerged and utterly re-created by redemptive Love. Of his identity in Jesus Christ.

And by that mysterious exchange of heavenly courtesy, of my identity in Christ.

“Don’t you understand? The Glory flows into everyone, and back from everyone: like light and mirrors. But the light’s the thing.”

“Do you mean there are no famous men?”

“They are all famous. They are all known, remembered, recognized by the only Mind that can give a perfect judgment.”

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

That’s what artists do. As Walt Wangerin charged in his keynote address (worth the trip alone) artists “weave the world around those who have no world or personhood or name”. They create a world out of the raw materials at hand and invite others to experience it in order to make sense of their own. To “interpret” what could never be “made sense of”.

“We are shapers”, he told us, taken literally from the Old English word for artist. “We come upon the mess and apart from our own wisdom we make order of it.”

It made me think of Catbird Seat’s Waiting for the Artist, a song much beloved to Philip and me in the early days of our romance:

Hold me close now I’m
Waiting for the artist
To paint all my feelings of you, my friend.

It’s beyond us, really, this naming of things that either break our hearts or set them free with joy—or both. We need artists to interpret them, to re-create them with an experience we can understand. I need that every day. And if the artist in question is a famous banjo-theologian or the 19^th century Scottish grandfather of fantasy or the rather shy four year-old that lives inside of my own heart that isn’t really the sine qua non.

It’s the One Transcendent; the One with the match in his hands, holding his flame above these heads as they’re bent over manuscript or canvas or musical instrument. The Creator.

Early Sunday morning I was able to carve out some time for coffee and conversation with my heart-friend, Sarah Clarkson. We capered from topic to topic, hardly chasing down one theme before we were off on the scent of another. We laughed over all our shared loves and we clinked our coffee mugs to Oxford 2011.

But when she asked me about my writing and my hopes for the future, of my own telling and shaping, I dragged my toe through the mire of insecurity and inadequacy. I fumbled something about being born into the wrong century and never being able to say what I want to say. And she beamed at me across the table, her eyes full of light, and placed her hand on my arm.

“Courage, dear heart,” she said low, in the words of Aslan to the timid Lucy.

It’s what the whole weekend did for me, encapsulated in one lovely moment of friendship. It put me in courage. It reminded me, exquisitely and rousingly, that I am not alone.

And that, of course, makes all the difference.

©2010 Lanier's Books. All Rights Reserved.

We’d never heard anyone use that phrase and we thought it was charming. He thought it was charming that we were charmed. He stood in the doorway and waved as we threaded the narrow alley with its Georgian rowhouses painted a rainbow of pastel shades.

“Come back again!” he called after us.

We had already visited his shop more than once. But, yes. We would definitely be back. Even if we were leaving England in four days’ time. Even if it were a matter of years…

The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire history of television. ~Andrew Ross

I’d like to issue just as cheery a salute to all of you who were kind enough to peruse the shelves of the new Bookshop at Lanier’s Books this past week. Thank you for your interest and excitement, your feedback and your orders! (And a special ‘thank you’ to my international customers who have been so kind and so patient as we’ve threaded the mazes of overseas shipping!) I’ve had the joy of putting faces with names and connecting dots of kinship between these virtual shelves; I’ve seen the dream of an internet facade with friendship behind it become reality this week. And I am more excited than ever.

I just wanted to let you know that I have added some lovely new titles to the shelves. You’ll see a few Christmas books among the selections (take a look at the first edition of The Old Peabody Pew by Kate Douglas Wiggin!) , as well as some wonderful Elizabeth Goudge  novels and compilations. And there are a couple of copies of Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road, over which I am rather delighted, as it is a book especially dear to my heart (look for a review next week to find out why…).You can sort newly added titles by the ‘Date Added’ feature on the right-hand  side of the screen.

Just one note of housekeeping: I like to cover my dust jackets with high-quality plastic sleeves to protect their integrity and to give them a nice, polished appearance. Unfortunately they don’t always photograph quite as well as I’d like, but unless otherwise stated, all dust jackets are brighter than they might appear in the pictures. (Any defects, such as chipping and tears, sun-fading and the like, have been noted in the descriptions.)

And, as always, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to drop me a line.

Blessings, Friends!

~Lanier

©2010 Lanier's Books. All Rights Reserved.

What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance. ~Jane Austen

Note: I wrote this piece two summers ago, and while circumstances don’t find me quite as artistically drained as I was then, it’s still a good word to myself in a historically thirsty time of year. This August was plenished  in an unprecedented way by the creative immersion of Hutchmoot, the first-ever in-the-flesh Rabbit Room assemblage, and the wells are brimming with inspiration. But today I am just right heartily tired…

It happens every summer. Just about the time my squash plants begin to wither up and die, succumbing at last to the insidious squash vine borers that I’ve been fighting since early June, something begins to wither inside of me. I pull out my little sleeveless smocked-yoke dress which is the coolest thing I own, I crank the air conditioning down to an unlawful 74, and, thumbing my nose at the mosquitoes outside, I officially enter survival mode. And there I remain, digging in my heels as it were, until that magical day when I turn the calendar page to September and everything begins to freshen up inside of me again. (Don’t ask me why this is; September in Georgia can be hotter than August. But September is always the beginning of everything, you know, even things that go along the same way, day in and day out…)

Thus ends my yearly love affair with summer. In May I am up to my ears in roses and in June I am giddy over the long hours of daylight and the fireflies and all the pretty clothes the season affords, but by this time in the year I am done. My forays into the garden are furtive, covert affairs, wherein I delight in outwitting the bugs that are laying in wait for me. And my poor garden itself, alas! is under a dictum of ‘survival of the fittest’ which means, quite plainly, ‘those that don’t require water will survive’, a condition which will remain in effect until Labor Day when all those bedraggled things will get pulled up and replaced with cool season crops. Ah, the very thought is like a tonic!

All of the ‘barn babies’ seem to be of the same frame of mind. The goats and the sheep venture into the pasture in the early morning and the early evening, and much of the rest of the time, if you chanced to stop by, you’d likely find them hanging out with the dogs and the cats and the chickens in the cool shelter of the barn. (I wish you could have seen the gay procession out to pasture this morning: Puck and Pansy leading the way with long Nubian ears flying as they pranced, fleecy white lambs ambling daintily along the track they’ve already worn on their perfect little black hooves, the two Pyrs, Juno and Diana watchful on either side and black kittens scampering behind. I think if I’d let the chickens out of their run they’d have fallen in line, as well!)

Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. -- Russel Baker

Caspian thinks that Dog Days mean that spoiled little indoor doggies get to just flop around on the cool wooden floors all day and have occasional ice cream treats (any of you dog lovers heard of Frosty Paws?) and popsicles (don’t tell him they are only ice cubes) and that a day’s work can be summed up in giving the mad rooster a quick run for his money around the yard. Yes, even daily walks have fallen by the wayside, and won’t be resumed till…you guessed it: September.

But as much as I anticipate this yearly doldrums—as much as I even look forward to it in a way as a fallow pause between the bright industry of the spring and the jam-packed poignancy of the autumn—I am always surprised by one aspect of it. I make such high writing goals for these languid months, calculating on the long, quiet afternoons and self-imposed borders within which words will spring up like obedient little flowers in a well-watered garden. The trouble is, and I’ve seen it perhaps more this year than others, the garden isn’t well-watered at all. In fact, it’s quite miserably parched. It makes my vegetable plot outside look like a verdant pleasure ground. The wells of creativity that I’ve been counting on are dry from little rain and choked with the debris of rushing about and hurry and frantic ‘doing’. For, much as we would all like to convince ourselves otherwise, inspiration is not an effortless flash that seizes us in a frenzy of output: words or music upon paper, brush and oil upon canvas, a delicate arrangement of hues in a garden. It is the result of quiet commitment to a passion that life would be colorless without, a daily and disciplined reckoning with what is important to us and what God has put within us.

I stand corrected before Him this summer as I’ve sat hour after hour before a blank computer screen. Replenishing is a slow and often painful process and it absolutely cannot be forced, a concept so utterly foreign in this ‘hurry up and do it yesterday’ culture of ours. We don’t like to have to wait for anything, whether it’s a meal or a line in the grocery store or a word beneath our itching fingers, poised on a breath above a keyboard. But the fact of the matter is that writing, as any other creative expression, is a process that requires nurturing outside of that time seated at our desks. There is a gentle reproof for artists in the words: Neglect not the gift that is in thee…

And we are all artists, of course. Every single one of us has our unique abilities and our unique way of looking at life, which are gifts of the Almighty and not to be disdained. This life is where we see God, and we see Him in two ways: In the merciful and mighty acts of His own creation, whether it be a violet and crimson sunset or a bird’s wing painted to perfection or the tender miracle of incarnate Love which He pours into our hearts and upon our circumstances. And we see Him revealed in the creative acts of His people. We all have to give an account of what we do with our talents. Or if talent sounds too pretentious, our affinities, which are really just divine endowments often muffled under a blanket of reticence or timidity or fear of making a fool of ourselves. I don’t call myself a writer because I think I am a good writer but because I absolutely must write. Because the created longs to lift a tribute to the Creator.

But when you’re walking through the mud and mire of writer’s block—or any other artistic mire—it never hurts to know that there are others out there that have experienced the same thing and that it’s a normal part of the creative journey we’re all on. And if it helps anyone else to hear of some of the means I’ve discovered of coping and hopefully growing through these arid seasons, then I’d be only too happy to share them in a later post.

But for now I have a frittata to put in the oven—you see, I did dash out and gather some vegetables and herbs from the garden, and the hens provided the rest—and then it’s down to the barn to tuck the animals all into their stalls for the night. It’s my favorite time of the day, the sun going down at last in a softened haze of pale gold and the breath of relief in the (somewhat) cooling air a promise of the regeneration to come.

For it will always come. We have our Father’s word on it:

I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs…      ~Isaiah 41:18

originally published on YLCF

©2010 Lanier's Books. All Rights Reserved.

Packing the first day's books for shipment

Go then, my little Book, and show to all
That entertain and bid thee welcome shall,
What thou dost keep close shut up in thy breast;
And wish what thou dost show them may be blest
To them for good, may make them choose to be
Pilgrims better, by far, than thee or me.

Louise May Alcott, from the preface to Little Women

Celebrating a wonderful first week for Lanier’s Books and all the book children en route to new homes. Thank you for making our launch such an overwhelming success! And you can look for new titles in the Bookshop next week!

~your Proprietress

©2010 Lanier's Books. All Rights Reserved.

In books lies the soul of the whole past time. ~ Thomas Carlyle ~

“It is the most friendly vocation in the world,” he announced…“A bookseller is the link between mind and mind, the feeder of the hungry, very often the binder up of wounds. There he sits, your bookseller, surrounded by a thousand minds all done up neatly in cardboard cases; beautiful minds, courageous minds, strong minds, wise minds, all sorts of conditions. And there come into him other minds, hungry for beauty, for knowledge, for truth, for love, and to the best of his ability he satisfies them all…Yes…it’s a great vocation.”

Elizabeth Goudge, A City of Bells

Lanier’s Books

Antiquarian Gems and Gently-loved Jewels

Now Open for Business

I’d like to extend the gladdest of greetings to all of you who are stopping by today and to thank you for coming to celebrate the realization of a life-long dream. While the world of the delightfully-dusty and dim bookshop seems to be vanishing before our very eyes, it is my desire that anyone who visits here may experience the warmth of a glad welcome and perhaps some good conversation, a hearty recommendation or two and a few touches of personal attention. Not to mention some lovely books for a reasonable value! We may not be able to talk face-to-face amid the tomes, but you can browse my reviews and ask me your questions. I consider you my friends, kind readers and kindred spirits. And it is my privilege to invite you to peek at my shelves and make friends of some of my favorite books…

But first, a little technical information:

• Lanier’s Books is open for business online today. The shop is brand-new, beta, so we are expecting a few ‘opportunities’ to arise here and there. Please have patience and bear with us if things do not quite work out like you would expect. We are going to do what it takes to address any issues quickly to make sure you have a satisfying experience. And, as always, if you have any questions or encounter any problems, do not hesitate to contact me at laniersbooks@gmail.com

• The URL for the bookshop is ‘http://laniersbooks.com/wp2010/shop.html‘. There is a link to the bookshop on the sidebar of http://laniersbooks.com. The URL may change in the future. The book shop lets you search for books by title, author, or anything else just by typing a phrase into the search bar at the top of the shop. You can clear out the search terms by clicking on the ‘Search:’ label next to the bar. When you highlight a book, details and photos will be displayed at the bottom of the screen. You should be able to purchase a book through PayPal by clicking on the ‘Purchase book button’. This will transfer you to an external PayPal site to make the purchase. You do not need a PayPal account–you can use a credit card for the purchase. More payment options are expected in the near future, but for now, PayPal / credit card are the options.

• We are not expecting so much traffic that we need to worry about multiple people purchasing the exact same book at the same moment. If this anomaly does happen to anyone, we will certainly straighten it out as quickly as we can. It might help if you refresh the inventory using the ‘refresh’ button in the upper-right hand corner (not the browser refresh) before making a purchase to make sure that no one else has just completed a purchase of that book. The inventory list will update automatically every 5 minutes, but you can speed things up pressing the button before making a purchase.

• We are planning on adding a ‘shopping cart’ soon. In the meanwhile, if you want to purchase multiple books, you will need to make these as multiple, independent purchases. Sorry for the inconvenience.

• This shop-on-the-internet requires the Adobe Flash Player. If you do not have this installed in your browser, you may need to download a small (1.5 MB) plug-in from Adobe. This also means that you probably will not be able to browse the shop’s inventory from an Apple iPhone or iPad.

• We are shipping books by media mail to keep postage simple and low. Let us know if you think this is a problem for you.

• If you are a customer living outside the standard U.S. media mail shipping area, we are planning on addressing your situation soon. If you would like in the meanwhile, you can go ahead and purchase a book. We may need an additional PayPal transfer to cover the remainder of the shipping charges. We will handle this on a case-by-case basis as we work out these details.

If you take a look at my sidebar, you’ll see that it has undergone a long overdue renovation. There’s a Contact form where you can send me your questions and the titles of books you’d like for me to search out for you. A brand new Gallery, updated Music and Links pages. And, of course, a link to the Bookshop. And if you scroll down to the bottom of this page you will find new links where you can follow Lanier’s Books on Twitter and on Facebook. That’s where I’ll be posting quick updates on new inventory and featured books, so come follow/twit/tweet/like whatever.

My beloved husband Philip and my darling friend Gretchen have been working tirelessly behind the scenes to improve the site and to make the launch of Lanier’s Books a success in every way. There’s no possible way that I can thank them adequately–it really deserves a post of its own, for all the long hours of coding Philip has put in and the endless chats  Gret has cheerfully maintained. Together they have made my dreams materialize and I really have no words at my command to express my gratitude. I am blessed beyond measure. (I love you both.)

Before I went to bed last night (ahem, this morning) I stood for a while, looking at the titles and spines of my inventory, now grown so familiar, rank and file upon the shelves. I thought of all the beautiful ideals and truths housed within, pure sweetness and light all but glinting off the gilt of some of them. And I thought about the new homes that await them, and the sympathetic minds that will give them safe harbor.

Suddenly, and without warning, I waxed very sentimental. I felt like I was sending children off to camp, or into the Great World. I felt like I needed to say goodbye to them. Or, at least, ‘Goodnight’. And as I turned out the light and closed the door of the upstairs bedroom that houses Lanier’s Books, it felt a little like closing up shop for the day at Downs’. I could almost hear Katherine’s loved drawl behind me, and the bumping of the cat carrier wherein  the pampered ‘D.C.’ made his trips to the store and back home every day.

I think she’s smiling today.

Raising my teacup to her. And to all of you, my friends. Thanks again for coming by.

©2010 Lanier's Books. All Rights Reserved.